454 Life Between Two Armies: Westchester County and the American Revolution

On October 28, 1776, the two armies of the American Revolutionary War met in White Plains, a small town about 30 miles north of New York City. Westchester County remained a wedge between the British Army to the south and the Continental Army to the north.

For the remaining seven years of the war, both British and American patrols monitored the roads of the county, tracking enemy movement and occasionally skirmishing. Locals leaned one way or the other, sometimes changed sides, and often found themselves at odds with their neighbors.

Char Weigel, a historian with Revolutionary Westchester 250, investigates how the county became a "neutral ground” and offers us a window into how, for residents, the Revolution felt like a civil war.

Show notes: https://www.benfranklinsworld.com/454

EPISODE OUTLINE

00:00:00 Introduction

00:10:16 How Westchester Farmers Fed New York City

00:14:08 Dutch Influence in Westchester

00:22:30 The War Arrives in Westchester in 1776

00:30:50 What Local Families Saw during the Battle of White Plains

00:34:51 Life in the Neutral Ground between the Armies

00:38:24 Women, Native Americans, and Enslaved People in the Neutral Ground